Thursday, November 17, 2011
How to Locate What's Sucking up Your Hard Drive Space | Mac|Life
How to Locate What's Sucking up Your Hard Drive Space
Posted 11/17/2011 at 8:01am | by Ben Harvell
It’s all too easy to say “oh, I’ll just delete some stuff” and then never do it. Take action today and cut the flab from your file system by locating the major space-sucking culprits.
1. Balancing the Blocks
The first step isn’t always the easiest, but this time it is: determine just how much space you have remaining on your Mac’s main disk. If you’ve read this far, chances are it’s not much. To get the complete picture, click on the Macintosh HD icon (or whatever you call your main drive) in the Finder, then type Command-I to bring up its Info window. From here, you can see the capacity of your drive as well as the amount of space available.
Aim to have a third of your drive free.
If the available storage is less than one-third of the total capacity of the drive, it’s worth freeing up more. The benefits of a healthy hard drive are far greater than just having more room to play with. With around one-third of your drive’s capacity available, you should see slight improvements in drive access as well as application speed. Mac OS X will also be able to use some of that storage as virtual memory to help it perform tasks without using your RAM, a great help to those using older Macs.
2. Find and Delete Huge Unwanted Files
Next, with the Finder selected, press Command-F to bring up a search window. Click on the first drop-down menu and select Other and then Size. From the second drop-down menu, select “is greater than” and then enter an amount in the field to the right of it. A good place to start is 50MB.
Next up: find those big files.
The files and folders that now appear in the Finder window all fit the criteria you entered—if you looked for files bigger than 50MB, these are all the files of that size or larger on your Mac. But wait! Before you start blindly erasing some of them, check out what they actually do on your system. Mac OS X includes some rather hefty system files that are necessary to keep things running smoothly. If you’re absolutely certain that you know what a file is, then chuck it, but it’s worth checking if in doubt. An easy way to find out more is to select a file, right-click on it, and select Open Enclosing Folder for more details on its origin.
3. Printer Pruning
It’s unlikely—unless you’re some kind of ink-on-paper connoisseur—that you have a printer for each of the hundreds of printer drivers stored on your Mac. If you head to Library > Printers, you’ll find a host of folders named after popular printer brands that weigh in at around 2GB in total. Wipe out all brands you don’t use, and don’t worry—if you buy a new printer, the Mac drivers will be included on the disc that comes with it or will be available online.
Drivers for printers you don’t own can take up surprising amounts of space.
4. Trash Apps
It doesn’t take long for your Applications folder to fill up with all sorts of junk you don’t need. All those 30-day trials, any apps you’ve replaced for alternative options, and outdated software you don’t use anymore can all take their toll. Fortunately, uninstalling begins with simply dragging an application’s icon to the Trash. Next, perform a quick Spotlight search for the app’s name to track down any related files, then also check your Documents folder. Better yet, if an app has an uninstall option, use that. The same applies to iOS apps—if there are any you don’t use anymore, delete them from within iTunes. You can always reinstall them at a later date using the same iTunes account you purchased them with.
5. Compress or Burn
If you’re an avid iLife user, you probably have a bunch of iMovie, GarageBand, and even iDVD projects that you’ve either published or shared already. They’re not doing any good just sitting on your drive—and the same’s true for projects and documents from other apps. So gather them all together, label them up into folders, and then compress them by right-clicking on them and selecting Compress from the menu. That reduces the file size a bit, but for even more space reduction, consider shifting these compressed folders to an external drive or burn them to a DVD, then delete the originals.
Wednesday, November 16, 2011
How Can I Fix My Chronic Lateness? via lifehacker.com
Dear Lifehacker,
I'm one of those chronically tardy people. Wherever I'm going, even if I'm just meeting my friends, I'm always 10 of 15 minutes late—and it's starting to irritate people. Got any suggestions for how I can avoid all these distractions and be more punctual?Sincerely,
Late LarryPhoto by Jeff Lueders.
Dear Larry,
I certainly understand your friends' annoyance (we all have that one friend who's always late), but it's good that you're determined to fix it. In fact, there are a lot of little tricks you can pull on yourself to get out the door quicker. Here are a few of our favorites.
Figure Out Why You're Late
There are any number of reasons you could be late everywhere. Perhaps you consistently underestimate traffic, or maybe you just get distracted too easily and end up rushing out the door 10 minutes later than intended. Determining the reason for your chronic lateness can help you find your own solutions. For example, if you keep underestimating traffic, Google Maps has a nifty traffic function that will let you know where the roads are congested (and even help you find an alternate, less congested route). If you're late because you get lost all the time, you can just leave a little bit earlier—not to mention learn your way around town a little better. If you just get distracted, though, you'll need to dig a bit deeper to make yourself more punctual.Keep Yourself On Track with Reminders and Alarms
The simplest thing you can do to keep yourself from getting distracted is use your calendar, smartphone, or other device to remind you when it's time to leave. Even a simple alarm on your smartphone can keep you from "losing track of time" and get you out the door. If you're an iOS user, previously mentioned GoTime is a really great way to keep track of when you need to leave. It'll automatically grab your calendar events for the day, calculate how long it'll take you to drive to your next event from your current location, and set off an alarm when it's time to leave. Of course, you can do this with any alarm program as long as you look up driving directions to where you're going ahead of time.If you take a little more prying, you can automatically shut down your computer with something like previously mentioned Smart Shutdown or iWannaSleep. Just tell it what time you need to leave, and it'll shut down your computer at that time, so you have no choice but to drag yourself away from Facebook and go get ready.
Always Plan to Be Early
It may seem like an obvious solution, but if you're constantly 15 minutes late wherever you go, just force yourself to leave 15 minutes earlier. This works nicely with the above tip about alarms—if you pay less attention to the time and more attention to when your alarm goes off, set it 15 minutes early and you'll be on time even if you take 10 minutes just to get your shoes on. And, on the off chance you actually are early, there are all sorts of things you can do to kill time. You probably have a few errands you need to run anyway, whether it's getting gas, going to the bank, or stopping off at CVS for toothpaste. Alternatively, you can just check out a nearby shopping center. Head to the nearest Best Buy and play with tablets, or check out the bookstore next door. You can also bring something to read or install a game on your phone to keep you occupied while you wait. Photo by Lauren Hammond.Enlist Your Friends to Help
Lastly, if none of these tips are really working, you can get your friends to help motivate you. They already probably heckle you for being late all the time, but if you ask them to be a little more evil and go radio silent, it might inspire you to move a little faster. Alternatively, you can set up a system where every time you're late, you pay for one of your friends' dinners, or something to that effect. After one or two more trips, you'll probably never be late again.
Sincerely,
LifehackerP.S. Of course, these are just a few of our favorite tips, but if you've got your own solutions, be sure to share them with us in the comments.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Dear Lifehacker,
Tuesday, November 15, 2011
How to Setup Gmail for Custom Domains on the Kindle Fire’s Email App - How-To Geek
If you’ve just opened your shiny new Kindle Fire and tried to connect it to Gmail using your own custom (not @gmail.com) email address, you might be in for a surprise: the email account wizard has no idea how to handle this scenario, even if you pick Gmail at the beginning. Here’s how to fix it.
Note: we’re in the middle of doing a thorough test of the Kindle Fire, and we’ll post our in-depth review in the next few days. So far: it’s a great tablet for the price.
Setting Up Gmail Custom Domain Email in Kindle Fire
You’ll need to start, naturally, by opening up the Email application and selecting from the list—you can choose Gmail, even though we’ll have to tweak the settings. Once there, enter your email address and password.
<p><img alt='' src='http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image57.png'/></p>
Then you’ll probably want to choose IMAP.
<p><img alt='' src='http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image58.png'/></p>
And now you’ll come to the screen that makes no sense. The username is wrong, the IMAP server is wrong, and the security type is wrong.
<p><img alt='' src='http://www.howtogeek.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/11/image59.png'/></p>
Instead of using those values, you’ll want to use the following:
- Username: Your full email address
- IMAP server: imap.gmail.com
- Security type: SSL
Head to the next screen, which will ask you for the outgoing server settings. You’ll want to use the following:
- SMTP server: smtp.gmail.com
- Security type: TLS
Once you get past that screen, you’ll be able to access your email without issue.
How to Set Up Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts on iOS via lifehacker.com
The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but if you're a heavy user of Google services, it can be a little confusing to set up your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts to sync with iOS. Here's how to do it.
You can get all your Google services syncing with iOS by setting up just one account. The trick is to choose Microsoft Exchange at the prompt instead of Gmail. This will give you access not only to your Gmail, but your calendars and contacts, and they will all sync directly to your phone—when you add a contact in Gmail or edit an event on Google Calendar, you'll see it show up on your phone without having to sync anything. To set it up:
- Open up the Settings app on your iOS device and go to the "Mail, Contacts, Calendars" section. Hit "Add Account".
- From there, choose Microsoft Exchange as the type of account (again, don't choose Gmail).
- Type in your Gmail address under Email. Leave the Domain field blank and enter your full Gmail address under Username (including the @gmail.com, @googlemail.com, or other suffix). Type in your password and give it any description you like. Mine's just called "Gmail".
- Press the Next button at the top of the screen. It should pop up a message saying Unable to Verify Certificate—if it does, just hit cancel. Then, type
m.google.comin the new "Server" box that shows up at the top of the screen. Then tap Next.From there, you should be all set. You can turn on Mail, Contact, and Calendar syncing from the account settings page that shows up. Note that pressing the trash can icon in the Mail app will archive a message, not delete it completely. If you want to delete it, you can hit the folder icon and choose Trash from the menu to move it to the trash. For more information on setting up Gmail with iOS, check out Google's help page on the subject.
Emailable Tech Support is a series of easy-to-share guides for the less tech savvy people in your life. Got a beginner tech support question you constantly answer? Let us know at tips@lifehacker.com. Remember, when you're just starting out computing, there's very little that's too basic to learn.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
The iPhone is a fantastic phone, but if you're a heavy user of Google services, it can be a little confusing to set up your Gmail, Google Calendar, and Google Contacts to sync with iOS. Here's how to do it. 
The Best Disc Burning App for Windows via lifehacker.com
Windows has more disc burning apps than we can count, but a few notable programs stand out from the pack. Our favorite is CDBurnerXP for its long list of features and easy-to-use interface.
- Burn discs by dragging files or burning an ISO image
- Burn audio CDs using multiple audio formats with ReplayGain, CD text, and gapless playback
- Burn video CDs, DVDs, HD-DVDs, and Blu-Rays with video files
- Spread data over multiple discs with disc spanning
- Drag and drop files using the integrated explorer or from any Windows Explorer window
- Support for multisession CDs
- Simple cover printing for data and audio discs, as well as LightScribe integration
Check out CDBurnerXP's web site for the full list of features.
CDBurnerXP (which, despite its name, is regularly updated and works on current versions of Windows) can burn nearly any type of disc you can imagine, whether it's a simple image burn or you're creating an audio or video CD. Not only is it powerful, it also has a very easy-to-understand interface. As soon as you start it up, you can choose what type of disc you want to create and start dragging files. Plus, it's completely free, and far more lightweight than many of the popular commercial options.
CDBurnerXP is more than powerful enough for most users, but if you're a very advanced user, you might find it lacking in a few tiny features (which you can find in other, less user-friendly programs like ImgBurn). Also, CDBurnerXP is adware, meaning you have to pay attention when you install it to make sure it doesn't install any other bundled programs on your machine. Other than that, though, it's a pretty fantastic program, and will suit nearly anyone's burning needs.
ImgBurn is the most obvious competition to CDBurnerXP. It can do almost everything CDBurnerXP can do (not to mention a few other things CDBurnerXP can't do—mainly in the realm of setting file attributes on data discs), but it's a lot less user-friendly. If you're burning ISOs, it's actually a bit easier—it only takes a few clicks to burn an ISO to a CD—but other disc types can be a bit more confusing. It also doesn't support multisession discs, which is a deal killer for some. Like CDBurnerXP, it also contains some adware. If all you do is burn ISO images to disc, ImgBurn might be a better choice, but otherwise, CDBurnerXP is our favorite.
Ashampoo Burning Studio Free is another great, user-friendly option, and is comparable to CDBurnerXP. It doesn't have as many features when it comes to burning video discs, but it does have a neat focus on backup and restore, if you use CDs or DVDs to back up certain files. Many people prefer it to CDBurnerXP, though it is a bit outdated as the newer versions of Ashampoo are all commercial.
That said, if you're willing to pay $40, Ashampoo Burning Studio 10 has a lot of cool features for burning discs (like menus for DVDs, autoplay options for data discs, and so on). If you need more flashy features than the above free programs can offer, Ashampoo is a heck of a lot better than most of the commercial options out there (I'm looking at you, Nero).
Again, there are a ton of other disc burning programs out there for Windows, but the above choices should fit your needs in nearly any conceivable situation. If you have a favorite program we didn't mention, let us know what it is and why you love it in the comments.
Lifehacker's App Directory is a new and growing directory of recommendations for the best applications and tools in a number of given categories.
You can contact Whitson Gordon, the author of this post, at whitson@lifehacker.com. You can also find him on Twitter, Facebook, and lurking around our #tips page.
Windows has more disc burning apps than we can count, but a few notable programs stand out from the pack. Our favorite is CDBurnerXP for its long list of features and easy-to-use interface. 
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